Under Immune
by Arrow
Summary: KOTOR. Someone has the sniffles and it's Carth's job to make sure she stays in bed and gets some rest. Revised to correct amusing typos.


A/N: Very short! And it wrote itself, because I'm sickly. It's hard to type when your not feeling well, bless spell check. Now I'm off to play KotOR for the fiftieth time.

EDIT: Spell check failed me. I apparently did not check close enough and some extremely amusing errors got past my supposed mad editing skills (that only work on other people). I'm hoping it was just because I was sick, but most likely I need to accept the fact that I should be less impatient and let someone beta this for me. Which is in the works, so I hope this won't happen again. Thanks to everyone who reviewed and let me know! ; At least they were funny, right?

--- Under Immune ---

"I'm not sick... I'm under-immune!"

A silence. Obviously he was thinking, how, in her tender condition, he should approach this. While he was not exactly afraid of her, he did not want to upset her pride and cause her to exert herself more than she should. Of course the urge to rib her for being such a gigantic baby was the greatest temptation.

"You can sit one out," he proclaimed firmly, resisting the urge to smirk at the pout forming on her face.

She threw her arms up and wobbled a bit where she stood. "It's just a small insignificant bug, I'm not really that sick."

"You have the flu."

"I have a cold."

"You have the flu."

"I have a small little cold."

He sighed and leaned against the doorway on his side. "Okay then, stand completely still for forty seconds."

She breathed out an exasperated sigh and some hair in front of her face flew up and then landed on her eye. "Fine, simple and easy!"

She stood her ground; a Jedi-like stillness took over her as she kept her feet still. Unfortunately, her head was not cooperating with the rest of her body and the pressure took over. She began to lose her balance, but determined as she was her feet stayed still. He made a quick move to catch her as she came crashing down.

"Do over!" she coughed.

"You're staying here and getting some well needed rest," he shook his head and looked at her with disbelief, "What did you expect, jumping off that waterfall... it's winter on that side of the planet!"

She scoffed and wrapped the oversized robe around herself. "He was getting away!"

He shook his head again and received a halfhearted smack to his arm for his trouble. "Mission and Juhani were at the bottom, besides he wasn't exactly the highest ranking Sith, we could have caught up to him later."

She coughed and let go an arsenal of sneezes and begrudgingly accepted his proffered handkerchief. She obnoxiously blew her nose and turned to rest her over-heated head on the cold metal of the wall. "I didn't go after him..." she said quietly and blew her nose again.

He looked at her suspiciously. "And what, that trip over the falls was just for the scenery?"

She mumbled something incoherent and fiddled with the closure on her robe.

"What was that, gorgeous?" he poked at her.

She huffed loudly and the pale peaky skin on her cheeks began to shade. "I said..." she blew another strand of hair, this time it was stuck to her head with sweat and hardly moved. "I... tripped!" she buried her face in her hands, keeping the soiled cloth loosely in her fingers.

His laughter vibrated throughout the hull of the ship. "What?"

She closed her fists by her hips and narrowed her vision, not without a slight wobble, "I was going after him, but I had the sense to stop at the waterfall... but it was icy and..."

He started to laugh again and he had to use the hand not supporting him on the doorway to grip his side. "Oh that one should go in the history books... that's better than when Bastilla 'dropped' her lightsaber!"

She shoved him off his balance and he barely caught himself. He did manage to have a few chuckles escape his lips. She stomped her foot in frustration. "You are supposed to be nice to me! I'm sick, you know!"

"It's just a cold."

"It's a Krayt Dragon sized influenza!"

"It's a case of the sniffles."

"It's a deadly unbalanced case of pneumonia!"

He laughed. "So then you won't be coming with us?"

She crossed her arms. "But..." she coughed, "look I'm not 'that' sick I guess... just I hate being stowed up on the ship while you guys go out and do something interesting!"

He let out a sharp laugh. "How do you think I felt on Manaan?"

She shook her head. "You were sulking."

"I was not sulking! It was a life altering event!"

"For ME not you... you – for lack of a better insult, bantha breath."

He growled under his breath, she was completely frustrating at times. "I'm not the one who was stupid enough to go under the water with sharks all over the place!"

"Yeah, because 'you' would have done _such_ a better job..."

He lowered his line of vision to meet her square in the eyes and scowled. "I'm just saying, other people can do these stupid," he sighed, "but necessary, little missions of yours."

She glowered at him. "Yeah like the swoop bike races on Taris? I didn't exactly see you volunteer to ride the moving stick of explosives!"

He blew out a breath of frustrated air and began to match her stance with his clenched fists by his hips. "Not everyone can ride those things... and we needed to win!"

"You're a pilot!"

"It's not the same!"

"Sure thing, flyboy, good landing yesterday by the way, we only lost half the systems this time!"

It took every bit of strength in him to remember that this was the woman he loved, and that she was sick, and that shooting her through the head with his blaster would, while satisfying, be very wrong. "Maybe it would be better to get another pilot, that way someone could man the turrets and we wouldn't loose hull plating every time some rogue squadron wants to kill us!"

"Maybe someone, namely YOU, could fly a little better so we wouldn't get noticed by every damn Sith in the galaxy!"

"Dammit, woman, why do you have to fight me on everything?"

She seemed to retract inside herself as her arms clung tightly around her and her face collapsed into a veritable scowl. He should have smacked her, or yelled at her, but all he could think to do was laugh. Laugh hard and loud at how utterly ridiculous this woman who obvious had the flu looked.

"Stop laughing at me, you hut-spawn!" but when someone laughs for no reason, it is always contagious and soon she was in stitches with him laughing and trying to hold some balance.

The laughter was broken when her laughter turned into a barrage of nasty coughs and sneezes. He stopped laughing and wrapped her in his arms as she kept the handkerchief that she still held up to her nose.

"Carth?"

"Yes?"

"I'm sick, I think I should stay in for this one..."

He smiled and bent his head to kiss her on the head. "As long as you think it's for the best, beautiful."

She trudged back into the barracks, wrapping the sheets around her and falling hard on the pillow with a heaving sigh.

He backed out slowly and smiled. He stepped softly through the halls as his shoes clanked against the hard metal. He took a deep breath as he approached the others and sneezed loudly. The crew of the Ebon Hawk looked at him and he shook his head.

"Don't worry, I'm not sick... I'm under-immune."


End file.
